


All Around Me

by Rubynye



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Flashbacks, speculations on backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: He signs,You [are] of me, and she answers,Of course.





	All Around Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dark_Labyrinth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_Labyrinth/gifts).



> My dear recipient, your ideas were very inspiring! I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> General note: I wrote the dialogue in this story as SEE instead of ASL because I didn't want to mistranslate ASL. Please read it as a translation convention, akin to a movie about Ancient Greece where the characters speak in English due to where and when the movie was made.

Drifting, drifting, letting the current carry them, they sail beneath the water’s surface under the glowing nighttime sky. The same stretch enfolds them, their fingers touch and skip and brush again, and her dress streams along her skin, her only remaining garment as she warms to the water night by night. So they travel timelessly, until a thought quivers his fingertips, and she turns to him to see what he’ll tell her.

He signs, _You [are] of me_ , and she answers, _Of course_. But he shakes his head, eyes glinting liquid upon liquid beneath the wavering moonlight, scales flaring along the ridges of his neck. _Of my sort,_ he shapes again with long fingers and curving arm, as they skim along, parallel to the water’s surface. _Of my people_.

Elisa — she tries to catch her breath and finds the water still unexpectedly viscous in her throat, but she’s been learning, she doesn’t choke. She exhales up and sideways, through her waving gills, and reaches for the slick warmth of his hand as a lost memory resurfaces. 

_Bright and cold, bright and cold, swirling all around her, not the warm warmth of the water world, scratchy crumblings beneath her arms. Bright and cold and pushing all over her without the supporting weight she’s known, pulling the wet from her skin, new heaviness dragging her into the hardnesses below. Her mother’s face appears, dark eyes shining strangely in the chill brightness; her mother’s fingertips touch her, sides of throat and curve above eyes, until sharp noises break the leanness around them, shoving her mother away blow by blow. Her limbs fall as she tries to raise them, her mother vanishes, blunter noises dent her ears, thuds descend towards her. People appear but not her people, hung with flapping matter, carrying long sticks, and they grip her body and pull her up into the chilly brightness, into the swirling leanness, away from her home water._

Eliza remembers, and exhales, a long gush beneath each gill, and opens her eyes from dark memories to warm water. He watches her, head tilted curiously, eyes limpid with moonlight and shadows; her heart swells beneath her breastbone, water caressing her skin like a silken echo of his hands, and she inhales again across her tingling gills as she smiles. 

_Maybe_ , she signs to him, _your eyes, like my mother’s_ , and touches his hand again, palm to palm.

 _Mother?_ He follows the word with an inviting flick of his hand, as he lays the other on the curve of her waist, warm through the sodden cloth, one remaining layer. 

Eliza drifts nearer, close enough to skim his chest with her arms as she signs, so he can feel as well as watch her words. _Your words, your eyes, brought memory back. My mother. My start._

 _Egg?_ , he signs, arms brushing hers, and she smiles all the more, water and happiness flowing over and through her. 

_Just after,_ she answers him. _New from egg_.

He considers this as he considers her, as they spin languidly along the current, around and around in a gentle double spiral. _Where is [your] mother?_ he asks, and strokes her hands before letting go so she can respond.

Eliza considers the question in her turn, considers the memory in its raggedness and distance. _Lost_ , she eventually answers. Her mother must have been lost, for her to be found orphaned on a riverbank. In response he pulls her close, and she tucks her cheek into the warm hollow bordered by the cord of his throat, as they continue turning, drifting onwards.

The water begins to flicker and tickle, and she raises her head to see silver flashes of fish, outliers to a churning column ahead. Eliza has grown happily used to the juicy sweetness of raw fish, and she eagerly kicks forward towards the school; he pushes them towards it, into its whirling center, a thrashing silver storm of fish all around them. It’s easier than picking fruit to seize them in both hands, twitching in her strengthening grip.

He only catches one, though, and taps her shoulder with his free hand as they coast through the cloud of fish and out the other side. As she looks up, he touches her throat, not either side of gills but down the center, running two raspy fingertips from beneath her chin to the collar of her vestigial dress.

Eliza feels, as he strokes her throat again, and once more. Then he strokes the fish he holds, in the opposite direction, up across its gills towards its mouth, as it writhes in his hold.

Eliza understands. She always understands him. He touches her throat once more and she swallows beneath his fingers, shutting her throat above their landmark. Her next breath pulls only water across her gills in a stronger stream than ever before, no longer pushing at her lungs where it doesn’t belong. Again, and again, as she breathes easily beneath his touch, within the water.

When he’s satisfied, he raises the fish to his bite, and as she lifts hers to eat with him she looks into his limpid eyes and smiles.

(((( ))))

They swim onwards and onwards, fingers touching as they float through the soft currents, time defined only by the slow-changing tilt of the moonlight wavering through the water around them. Eventually darkness appears from the darkness, wobbling in the middle distance, and she almost pauses, uncertain of it.

He hastens, though, long thighs flexing as he accelerates, and she catches his hand and throws her head back, feeling the water part and rush around them, trusting him as they head for the dancing darkness.

Long ribbons unfurl amidst moonlight and fish, a bed of kelp revealing itself to them. He leads her into it, among the waving fronds brushing her all over, more thickly and slickly than the water does, until they rest in the center of the submerged forest. There he pulls down a long strand, broader than her arm, and loops it around them both. 

More light now, bluer, rising in long lines across his skin, and her heart beats in her chest, rising in excitement. She takes her fullest breath, water rushing through her, claiming her, grips the hem of her dress and pulls it up and away as he winds more flat belts of kelp around them into a securing blanket.

Soon they are almost cocooned, wrapped together, lit only by his light… and hers, new and sparkling, shimmering along her veins. She looks at herself, shining within his arms, and up at their mingled glow glittering in his eyes, and tells him fervently, _I am of you. I am of your people._

He pulls her close, his acknowledgment shining through his skin, and she nestles every inch of hers to his body, within the swathes of kelp, as she rests, her eyes filled with light.


End file.
